


nothing. everything.

by civillove



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:48:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22571992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/civillove/pseuds/civillove
Summary: Beth knows that things like this happen.She knows and yet, distantly, that doesn’t make it any easier. For some reason she thought that if she did the work long enough, if she submerged herself more into the business… The less likely there’d be mistakes, of her feeling like she doesn’t quite belong in this world.It’s an incredibly foolish thought; naïve.But she keeps having them anyways.--this is a small, dark fic and i have zero excuses
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Comments: 14
Kudos: 96





	nothing. everything.

**Author's Note:**

> once again this was something that just wouldn't let me be so I wrote it. It's small, dark and emotional--but why not?

Beth knows that things like this happen.

She knows and yet, distantly, that doesn’t make it any easier. For some reason she thought that if she did the work long enough, if she submerged herself more into the business… The less likely there’d be mistakes, of her feeling like she doesn’t quite belong in this world.

It’s an incredibly foolish thought; naïve.

But she keeps having them anyways.

Her eyesight flickers down to her feet in the shower, under the constant stream of water hot enough to scald, and follows the curling of blood against porcelain down the drain. She bites down hard on her lower lip, little pinpricks of white filling the back of her eyes as she stares. She blindly reaches for something, anything to distract her—shampoo, bodywash, a loofah, whatever, and then remembers she’s not in her own shower.

Rio’s bottles of cool colors, black and blue, stare back at her accusingly. She suddenly feels like an idiot for not replacing the few of her sundries she had in here at one point. Her body aches for rose scented bubbles and floral lavender suds.

She runs her fingers down the condensation on the words describing cedar and musk and her stomach clenches at the idea of smelling like him but her elbows lock up and she can’t move. Her hair drips into her eyes and she manages to push it away, letting out a slow breath that feels labored.

Her lungs hurt.

Beth tips her head back and focuses on the stream for a few moments, taking oxygen in and out, feeling her chest expand like a balloon. It’s distracting for a little before she lifts her hand up to rub her neck and her fingertips are kissed pink.

She’s missed blood there.

She turns almost too quickly, nearly slips to dip her skin back under the stream, scrubs her neck raw. Fingernails are almost scratching, almost digging, to get it out of her pores.

Beth could scream but she swallows it down where it belongs. Rio is putting Marcus to bed a few walls over so she can’t; she _won’t._

She’s not going to let this get the best of her; she’s been here, she’s learned, she’s come out on the other side. Shit like this happens, things get out of control, jobs aren’t always smooth and she _knows_ that.

She’s been doing this long enough with Rio that it should be understandable, it should be second nature.

She’s watched Rio kill people before, sometimes with his gun, other times with his hands. Bare hands. It’s always been out of necessity; it’s always the concept of ‘us’ or ‘them’. He seems so unaffected by it; how good he is at life slipping through his fingers. Doesn’t it bother him? What keeps him up at night?

Is it nothing?

Is it everything?

Everything keeps her awake.

Sometimes she dreams she’s drowning in blood, other times stacks of fake money bury her alive, paper cuts all over her body. It doesn’t happen often but when it does, she wakes up nauseous and she wonders if this is what she should be doing with her time, with her life.

_It’s been ten minutes and her breathing is still labored, knees pressed against her chest as she leans back against the headboard. There’s a solitary light on a nightstand next to Rio and he’s sitting up with her despite his body sagging with exhaustion._

_He doesn’t touch her, very careful not to. He knows better now after several of her nightmares; she has to make the first move._

_And eventually she does, leans until her shoulder presses against his own. “What was it about?” He asks, tipping his chin down until his lips brush against her cheek._

_“Everything.” She mutters, digs imaginary blood out from under her fingernails._

_Rio hums but says nothing else. The silence has enough words._

Despite her doubts, Rio’s body is warm and the cash is cool and gratifying against her fingertips—so she presses onward.

It still doesn’t make nights like this any easier.

Beth scans her body, thinks she’s gotten all the blood, her skin tinged pink and raw in places. It’s worth it even though she’s sore and a little tender. She swallows and glances at her feet again, the stream running clear, no more red.

No more red that she can see.

She lifts her chin as she hears the bathroom door open and close, gentle steps moving forward. She swallows, her eyes fixing on the muddled shape through the glass shower door. It’s like a watercolor she’s seen before, a painting in the back of her mind, his body jumbled shades as he stands right outside.

A transparent wall between them, separating, but she can feel his hesitance. Beth says nothing, waits for him to speak, and the silence stretches to settle on her skin—another layer she wants to wash away.

“You alright?” He finally asks; his voice echoes in the hollow space.

Beth closes her eyes against it and she clasps her hands together under the stream of water. She dips her face against it, water prying her lips apart, wetting her tongue. Drips fall from her eyelashes when she pulls away and she reaches for the handle to turn the water up hotter—when it inevitably turns cold she’ll have to get out and she’s not ready for that yet.

“Just bruised and battered,” She replies after a few moments, “I’ve been through worse.”

And she has. She’s been grazed by bullets and knives and the one terrible time Rio had to stich her up in a rundown garage because the hospital was too risky. She thumbs at that scar on her right side, slightly puckered skin to the touch.

His hands never shook.

She’s had bruised ribs and concussions and ugly marks on her face that she’s had to hide with makeup.

All in all, this isn’t that terrible. Her body hurts, there’s a bigger bruise on her hip where she was kicked and then a few speckled on her collarbone from landing on the pavement weird. The skin of her palms bite from gravel, elbows and knees skinned.

The blood wasn’t hers.

“That’s not what I asked.” Rio takes another step closer and she feels it more than she sees it.

Beth’s quiet for another set of moments, running her thumb over her pruned fingertips. “I’m fine, Rio.” She clears her throat, fights for normalcy. “Did you get Marcus to sleep alright?”

He sighs out and she can picture him clenching that muscle in his jaw that tells her he’s frustrated, this time because she’s evading. He’s spent his entire existence doing that ever since he’s become a part of her life, so maybe it’s time he knows what it feels like.

She runs her hands over her face and turns away from the stream, taking her time to work her nails into her scalp a few times. Beth hears him moving around the bathroom, probably putting her bloody clothes that she left on the ground in the wash, finding something else for her to wear when she exits, bringing her a towel.

“He went down fine. He asked about you.”

Beth clasps the side of her neck and finds herself biting her upper lip between her teeth; she couldn’t have seen him tonight and both of them know that but neither of them say anything. She’s not in the right headspace and Marcus is extremely observant for how young he is; he’d know instantly that something wasn’t right.

And she still doesn’t understand how to explain death to a child. Even moreso, she wouldn’t take that step with a kid that’s not her own.

Lying is beyond what she can give anyone right now; she’s doing too much of it for herself.

She turns the dial again for hotter water.

The glass door slides open and before she can say anything, Rio slips inside. She huffs out a petulant noise even though her body reacts to his instantly, calmed by his presence, his hands falling to her waist.

“I said I was fine.”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you.” He rolls his eyes ever so slightly, his thumb running a circle around the bruise on her hip; she nearly winces out of his touch but he holds her in place.

Rio reaches past her for his shampoo and she shakes her head, her forearm bumping into his to push the bottle away. “No.”

“What you got somethin’ against cedar suddenly?”

Beth scrunches her nose, slightly aware that she’s aggravating herself by not allowing him to take care of her. There’s this squirming in her stomach that she’s barely keeping at bay with his hands on her—she wants to push him away and draw him closer all at once.

“I’m just not in the mood tonight.”

“For shampoo.” Rio says slowly, it’s not a question, like every syllable licks his teeth.

She looks at the ceiling and turns, just a little, so she’s facing him and gives him a look that she hopes isn’t too scathing. He stares right back at her and turns the bottle upside down to pour a decent amount into his palm.

“Stop bein’ ridiculous. I know you want your hair clean before you go to bed. You’ll be bitchin’ all mornin’ because you won’t be able to get a brush through it.”

She huffs out a sound and hates that he knows her too well, inside and out, touch burned into her skin. The shampoo is starting to bubble and slip over his fingers but he won’t work it into her strands until she yields to the idea.

This is a losing battle anyways, it’s not like she’s about to get out of the shower just so the cedar scent doesn’t stick to her skin and hair. She turns and it takes him a moment but he begins washing her hair, working his hands into it until she’s forced to close her eyes. Silence drifts its way around them, hugging their bodies like steam from the shower.

Beth lets out a slow sigh when he rinses the shampoo out and hates that she _does_ feel slightly better with clean hair.

There are words on the tip of Rio’s tongue, she can sense it before he says it, “What happened tonight is all part of it, sometimes it’s just—”

“If you’re about to say, ‘business as usual’ I might hurt you.” Beth warns and it sounds like she’s chewing on glass. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

Rio looks down at her, his eyes boring into her own, gentle and ablaze at the same time. “I think you do.”

She swallows and shakes her head; remembers sitting in his car on the way home, wanting to undress there and then. Blood warm and sticky on her skin. Did she even get it all off?

“Rio, I’m serious.” She warns but he’s not scared of her; he never has been, he’s never treated her like broken shards or something too fragile. He presses because he knows she can take it and usually that within itself means a lot, but not tonight.

Not when she’s so close to crumbling in on herself.

“You can’t expect to come out of every meetin’ clean,” He takes one of her hands and forces it open, his thumb on her lifeline. “Blood sticks.”

She wrenches her hand free and pushes him but it’s not hard enough to set him off balance. She thinks he braces himself because he was expecting it. “What did I _just_ say _?”_

“I heard you,” He repeats, _I just don’t believe you_ lingers somewhere in the air between them. Water sprays off his shoulder, misting into her eyes. “This won’t be the last time this happens,” She can feel her breathing start to change, almost hyperaware of it as soon as it transpires. Her lungs stutter and her hands move a little frantically, trying to push him away, push his words away.

He combats her swatting easily, grabbing at her wrists to stop her,

“You have to own it or it’ll bury you alive, mama. Gettin’ your hands dirty is a part of you now.”

Every word slices into her skin, pulling at blood, she feels it drip down her body with the water, pool at her feet. Warm, all too warm, just like it being stuck on her hands in the car.

“You can’t always wash it away.”

Beth manages to get one of her hands free and _slaps_ him, rough, right across his cheek. Anything to get him to stop talking, for his words to stop slipping into her pores like needles. She’s shaking, can feel her knees knocking together as she watches him.

His chin is tilted slightly and he’s letting out a slow, patient breath—he expected this too, Beth wonders if this was his intention all along. His cheek is kissing pink and she distantly wishes it was from her lips instead of her stinging palm. Her breathing stutters, her lower lip being drawn in-between her teeth and she feels the exact moment her face scrunches up—

And she cries.

Beth’s head bows and she covers her mouth with her hand, though it does nothing to cover up the gut wrenching sounds of her sobs. Her body bends, even before Rio reaches for her and her forehead presses against the soft cadence of the pulse in his neck. She fits so perfectly there, between his collarbone and shoulder, and tries to distract herself with sounds that aren’t her own. The gentle roar of the shower, the patterned intake of his breathing, the shushing noise his lips occasionally make.

They distract her for a few moments.

Rio’s one hand clasps the back of her head as his arm wraps around her waist, pulling her into him, skin to skin. He holds her there for what feels like too long, the water growing cold, his hand soothing down her hair and back, circled patterns on her spine. He eventually turns slightly to rotate the water off, the silence deafening as her tears slow.

She’s glad they’re in the shower, that he can’t see the tear tracks on her face; that they’ve slipped down her skin and drain in the same direction as the blood minutes before.

He lets her stay pressed against him until they inevitably have to pull away; Beth feels like her cheeks are flushed and her nose is stuffed from the steam of the shower. Rio steps out first and grabs her a towel waiting on the sink, wraps it around her and curls his fingers around her ear. He tips her chin, just slightly, to take a look into her eyes.

His gaze is soft, almost too much, and she has to look away.

Beth shakes her head, takes a step back and begins drying herself off. She goes through the routine on autopilot when Rio leaves the bathroom, toweling her hair and slipping into warm clothes. Despite taking a long shower, her skin feels dry, like all the moisture has been taken away from scrubbing. She squeezes body lotion onto her hands and massages it into her arms and neck and face, taking her time to make her way into the bedroom.

Rio’s in his closet, she can see the light on and the pads of her feet are cold against the cherry wood as she goes to sit on his bed. She watches his shadow on the floor, the way it moves, elegant and measured.

He’s like that when he fights; calculated and purposeful, death can bloom in his hands just as easily as something tender—like when he makes her cum, pulls her close to kiss her, or lifts Marcus over his shoulder at the park.

Beth looks down at her own hands and runs her thumb over her knuckles as she leans back against the headboard. She’s tired in a way she hasn’t felt in a long time, a bone aching exhaustion that’s licking at her nerve endings.

When she looks up, Rio’s moving towards her in a pair of black joggers and a white t-shirt and he sits down in front of her with one of his legs hooked up under himself. She sniffles and rubs the back of her wrist at the corner of her one eye; wants to say sorry for breaking in half even though she knows he’d never accept that apology.

He reaches for one of her hands and pillows it between his own, his thumb tracing the outline of her pointer finger. The veins of his hands are tantalizing for a few moments and Beth chews on her lower lip before she clears her throat,

“Blood sticks,” She repeats his phrase from the shower, her voice raw in places. “How do you get it off your hands?”

He squeezes her fingers, “I don’t, Elizabeth.”

Her mouth opens and words fail her for a moment, a frustrated puff of air leaving her lips instead. “And that doesn’t bother you?”

There’s a hint of a smile on his lips but it’s gone too fast; Beth thinks it might have been the trick of the light playing with shadows on his face. “It used to.” His eyes search hers, digging, sifting, that muscle clenching in his jaw as he chews on words before he says them, “What do you want me to say, ma?”

_What do you want me to tell you?_

Beth closes her eyes, swallows down something thick. She doesn’t know; she wants him to lie to her, maybe, to tell her that this is what doing business looks like. Sometimes it looks like cash, bourbon neat or bright colored pills in cars, and green and red rubber bands.

Sometimes it looks like broken glass, bruises and shell cases and blood.

“Nothing,” She says after a moment. _Everything._

He lifts her hand, does as she says, and kisses the back of her wrist. It’s enough for now. Rio pulls back after that only to move to the other side of the bed and slips under the sheets, drawing himself closer to her like a magnet. His body fits against her own and she feels her weight shift until her head falls back onto his shoulder.

His skin is warm, his breathing is patterned normalcy.

She sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! i'm always at blainesebastian.tumblr.com/ask -- accepting drabble / oneshot prompts :3


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